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1000 paid members!

The Ness Labs private community just crossed 1000 paid members!

Ness Labs crosses 1000 paid members

We now have events every week, co-working sessions, AMAs with experts, exclusive content, and more. The first Ness Labs online course will also be bundled with the membership.

I launched the community in March this year. Reaching 1000 members is an important milestone because it shows building a community can be a sustainable model. But you can't build a successful community overnight, however you define success: it takes a lot of time, energy, and care.

Still absolutely worth it.

I highly recommend it as a path to sustainability for indie hackers who are not quite ready to start a SaaS business. It's a great way to get to know your potential users, to bring them value early on, and to practice some of the same skills you will probably need to maintain a SaaS, such as customer support. Added bonus: you'll make friends along the way. :)

  1. 2

    Congrats on your 1,000 true fans!

    Appropiate to read this today: https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/

    1. 2

      Thank you! Such a relevant article indeed :)

  2. 2

    Congrats, Anne-Laure! That's incredible.
    What do you use to host/manage your community, and why?

    1. 2

      Thank you! I use Circle, it's very easy to use, and it integrates with other useful tools like Memberful. The customer support is also outstanding.

  3. 1

    Huge milestone, congrats Anne 🎉

    The benefit to communities is that they often compound with time. Looking forward to following the progress!

  4. 1

    Congrats @anthilemoon! I’ve followed you for awhile now and reads loads of your articles.

    $5 strikes me as a low price considering all the value you’re probably adding. How do you think about your price?

    1. 1

      Thank you, Tim! The membership is currently 50% off because I want as many people as possible to be able to afford it during the pandemic. I plan to raise the price in the near future, but early members will be grandfathered.

      1. 1

        Makes sense! You'll win a lot of loyal fans with that strategy :)

  5. 1

    Love hearing your progress and being part of your community too!

    We're also learning from your roadmap as we build our teacher community.

    1. 1

      Thanks so much, Rob! And glad my experience is useful to you in building your community :)

  6. 1

    I see you grow from the start is amazing! Congratulations Anne-Laure 😎🥳🎉 you did it!

  7. 1

    Anne-Laure, love this. I'm a member and just upgraded to annual, I appreciate the work you've put in here.

    Is this a safe space to ask a question?

    How does the duty and obligation of running this community sit with you? That energy and "care" you speak of, does that weigh heavily on you? Is it daunting, and heavy, or is it motivating and energising?

    1. 4

      Hi Jason! Thanks for being a member :)

      It depends - there are days where I feel energised, and there are days where I feel like it's a lot of work. But when that happens I just do some light admin stuff like scheduling events, so I don't burn out.

      It's more about maintaining consistency over the long term rather than aiming for unsustainable levels of intensity.

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